No Knead to Fuss: One Pot of Bread

All right, I will admit that I’m stretching the definition of “one pot meal” a bit here. When someone says a one pot meal, they mean an actual meal pulled together into a pot, typically a soup or stew full of goodies. And while I did have some ideas for the typical one pot meal, my family was a bit full up on soup this week and I wasn’t going to press my luck trying out a new soup recipe.
Instead, I opted to try out no knead bread, a baking application which has been on my mind since I read about it in The New York Times (online). It also involves an enameled cast iron pot, which if one uses as the mixing bowl as well, could justify my claim that this is indeed a one pot meal. Plus a towel and table. Details. And whether some slices of delicious bread and butter constitutes a meal.

A Tribute to My Love of Sandwiches.

Baked Salmon with Roasted Bell Peppers and Capers Sandwich.

This is truly a glorious week for Reddit’s 52 Weeks of Cooking, because it focuses on the sandwich! My love of sandwiches as a food marvel cannot be overstated, especially given how many of them I’ve posted here.

The sandwich is truly one of the most wonderful of food delivery mechanisms, as well as the most versatile. Though he wasn’t the inventor, the sandwich was given its most commonly used name by the John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who popularized the food item as a way to eat without needing to take a break from playing cards back in the day (Source: Sesame Street, Wikipedia.)

Yakisoba bread.

Baked Salmon with Bell Pepper and Capers

The great thing about quality products is that you don’t have to make a big production to have great results. The other day I had on hand some lovely Coho salmon, and found this rather simple preparation for baked salmon with bell peppers and capers, with both bell pepper and capers being items my mother loves in cooking. This is a key detail because I made this dish a few nights ago for my mother’s birthday.

The recipe actually calls for sockeye salmon. I’m not sure why there’s a particular emphasis on that kind, as I think this would work well with any fairly thick salmon fillet.

The ingredients are very simple to pull together. A few pounds of salmon fillet, olive oil, sea salt, capers, garlic (not pictured)…

And of course the bell pepper. Three would be preferable, as the peppers were quite nice. In a way, I felt a bit like Donald Rumsfeld in this aspect: you don’t go to dinner with the peppers you want, you go to dinner with the peppers you have. Actually, no, I didn’t feel like Donald Rumsfeld at all. That guy can go to hell.

You might want to preheat the oven to 375 degrees F at this point, but it can probably wait until the peppers have been dealt with.

That is you need to char them. A blow torch really would have been a better tool, as a bell pepper is a rather inconveniently shaped thing.

Once well charred all around, darkening as much skin as you can get without burning down into the flesh, allow to cool a bit and then wrap in plastic, or place in a covered bowl. The idea is to trap them with the moisture.

If you haven’t preheated the oven, now’s the time to do it.

Now, lay out your washed and paper towel dried salmon fillets in a baking dish coated liberally with olive oil.

Toss the capers and some cloves of garlic on the fillets.

Now’s a good time to deal with the bell peppers. Those uncharred nooks and crevices are a bit annoying but we’ll deal.

Rub off all of the skin from the now cooled off peppers. If you are a big cheater like me, doing this under running water helps speed up the process quite a bit. I’m sure you lose some flavor and nutrients but when you’re on the clock there’s no shame in a shortcut.

There we go, some beautiful skinned bell peppers with a nice moist “chewy” feel to the flesh.

Even roasted bell peppers can be cut up using the side slicing method I describe here, albeit with a bit more care. Then cut them up into roughly square inch-inch and half pieces and toss onto the fish.

Finally, season with finely ground black (or white) pepper and sea salt.

Put the whole assortment into the preheated oven for 16 minutes, and you’re all set! Let it sit for a few minutes before serving.

Goes great with mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli.

And there you have it. A simple but still very nice birthday meal for a mother. Provided she likes fish.

Baked salmon with Bell Pepper and Capers, adapted from Epicurious.

2-3 bell peppers, red and or yellow

2 pounds salmon fillets

Olive oil

2 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed in cold water if packed in vinegar (if salt packed, soak in water for ten minutes). Chop if desired

4 garlic cloves, peeled

Fine sea salt

Finely ground black or white pepper ground

1. Char bell peppers, then place in a covered bowl, or allow to cool slightly before placing them in a food safe plastic bag. Once completely cooled, remove skin and chop roughly into square pieces of about an inch or an inch and a half.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
3. Wash and dry fish with paper towels.
4. Place fish fillets, skin side down, in a baking dish coated liberally (but don’t go overboard) with olive oil.
5. Toss on the capers, cloves, and bell pepper pieces, then season with fine sea salt and ground black or white pepper.
6. Place baking dish into preheated oven for 16 minutes. Remove and allow to cool a few minutes before serving.

Sbiten, a Spiced Honey Drink.

Note: Don’t actually drink this much sbiten.

Ok, a bit late. I have finally done what I didn’t want to do, submit a recipe for 52 weeks of cooking on the first day of the following week.

But I guess given how many people submit weeks afterwards, I should not be so hard on myself.

This week’s theme is Russian food by the way, which is something I’ve never ever really thought about outside of a James Bond movie, or hearing about borscht. I wanted to try something a bit different however, and I think I found the ticket on wikipedia: sbiten, a spiced honey drink akin to good old grog, scourge of scurvy. Actually given how little citrus is in this, I’m not sure it would prevent scurvy.

Prepare to Gougere!

A few weeks back, I gave my first try at using choux pastry to make profiteroles, most definitely a sweet treat. This time I am using it as a vessel to serve of some cheesy goodness, seeing as how cheese is this week’s theme for the 52 week cooking challenge.

Oh, a quick aside, here is a shout out to a young person in PA who has just started checking out the blog and going through some challenges right now.  There are people thinking of you and rooting for things to work out! All the best luck to ya kid.

Ok back to business.

The preparation is called the gougere and is prepared almost exactly like the choux pastry for the profiteroles, with possibly the slight change of slightly more salt. And of course the addition of cheese. I’d like to take the time to add a caveat that one not go too crazy with the salt depending on the cheese you intend to use.

If you had, say a particularly salty Parmigiano-Reggiano, rather than adding a full teaspoon extra of salt, you might just want to go for a pretty big pinch.

And if you don’t care about looks and feel very lazy, they can end up rather flat looking. But still wonderfully creamy and cheesy on the inside.

Week 10–Book Inspired: Ja-Pan #16! Mt. Fuji Like Bread AKA Yakitate!! Ja-Pan’s Take on Naan!

Thanks for coming to check out the blog again. Something a bit different this time. This time the challenge on Reddit was to make a dish that was movie or book inspired.

So I went and made something. So what the hell is it some of you may be asking? I might actually be cheating here since rather than a novel kind of book it’s from the manga/anime Yakitate!! Ja-Pan, which follows the story of some baker in the pursuit of bread, with the focus being on protagonist Azuma Kazuma, both something of a bumpkin and baking genius who has come up with several classic bread recipes out of his own head, and having no idea of the original recipe, refers to them as Ja-pan, a pun on being Japanese and pan, or bread.

So what the hell is this you thing I have presented here you might ask? Why it is Ja-pan #16 obviously!

It’s a Choux In! Week 9, Coffee: Profiteroles Filled with Coffee “Infused” Pastry Cream.

It’s another almost last minute post to meet this week’s theme on 52 Weeks of Cooking. At least it isn’t Sunday. Well, maybe it is, but I started working on this post on Saturday, so give me at least partial credit. Ok racing the clock!

As stated in the title, the theme is Coffee. I wrestled quite a bit over what to make. After a bit of deliberation, along with some flat out rejection of my thoughts of some savory coffee dishes by my family, I opted to go with something a bit more conventional, and took the dessert route. I had my heart set on making curry, but I suppose paying tribute to a Vietnamese Borrowed from French cooking tradition, the Bánh Choux, or as it is more commonly called in the States, a Cream Puff. Other equally acceptable names are Bánh Xu, Bánh Su, Bánh Sữa, and as mentioned in the title, profiteroles. I’m sure I’ve missed a few iterations not to mention several languages, but we have some cooking to get to.

Anyway, first the glamour shot. This is the end result folks! So now that you know what we’re in for, you can continue reading or… well, I hope you do.